Right up front, please know that Four Arenas of Practice is a list I’ve crafted myself, like super recently. So if you haven’t heard of them before that makes good sense. Four Arenas of Practice are: joy, gratitude, self-befriending, and comfort zone expansion work. NOTE: I’m trying really hard not to put the word ‘The’ in front of Four Arenas, so as not to give the impression that these are the ONLY practice areas worthy of investing time & energy into. There are many places in which to dig the well, these four just happen to be mine.
Assuming our basic needs are being met, actively engaging with one or more of these four arenas will enable us to truly feel as though we’re living a good life, regardless of the ills, challenges, and hardships that come our way.
There’s part of me that wants these arenas to be a linear situation. As in: if I start in one arena it will lead me to the next arena and then when I make my way to the final arena, I’m done! Mission complete! But these arenas do not work that way. They overlap; co-create each other; spill into one another. There’s no starting place, and therefore also no ending place. While they are distinct and distinguishable, they are not separate.
These practice arenas are places of ongoing maintenance, on-the-spot upliftment, and strength training. They assist us both in the short term and over the long haul. Their influence and impact are simultaneously immediate and time-releasing.
These Four Arenas are not simply areas for contemplation and reflection. Though yes, do that. These are areas in which to practice. And by practice I mean effort and action need to be applied. Here are some possible ways to activate ourselves in these Four Arenas.
J O Y
Make time to do the things you like to do. This may sound super basic, but most of us don’t prioritize enjoyment in our life. We put it off, relegate it for later, regard it as trite & trivial, and/or wait for joy to manifest spontaneously. For many of us, work & house projects & errands take precedent (always). Encouragement: think small. Sure we might like to travel or see a fave musician in concert or do a million other big things, but the subtleties of joy are vast & varied. When it comes to making time to do the things you enjoy doing, think & act small. This way we can enfold the cultivation of joy into our daily or weekly routine.
Expand your attention. Misperceptions about joy abound. One of the common ones is that joy is only big & flashy. If we think joy exists only in big-bang moments, we’re likely to miss the quiet simple joys that are quite literally all around us. The other day, for example, I was making a blended butternut squash soup and I was really wishing I had a ladle in which to scoop it up with. Then I remembered that we had fetched all of our things from our storage unit the previous day and my ladle was in a bin inside our freshly delivered shipping container now wonderfully located on our property. My ladle was just a short walk away! Expanding our attention when it comes to joy allows our radar to pick up on things that we might otherwise gloss right over. When our attention is more expansive, we discover joy everywhere we are and anywhere we go.
Let the good in. When something good happens we can sometimes have the tendency to slough it off or disregard it as being no big deal, or at least not a big enough deal to make any sort of difference. This kind of practice – and yes, it is a practice – is very unfortunate. If we keep the door to our heart closed when good things happen, we can become quite cynical and jaded. Letting the good in involves making a conscious effort to notice goodness when it’s present, allowing it to penetrate into our mind/body system, and savoring it for as long as possible. Goodness is always in motion and good people are everywhere. Practice to see it and let it in.
(Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog post, where I’ll share practices for the other three arenas.)
going outwords & inwords 